


Y Cywydd, or, The Love Poem

by ConanDoylesCarnations



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: AU: Gawain is a poet and Lancelot is his patron, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Friends to Lovers, Happy St David’s Day this is based on the 14th-century Welsh poet, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Mutual Pining, Referenced Period-Typical Homophobia, mlm/wlw solidarity, wlw Guinevere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConanDoylesCarnations/pseuds/ConanDoylesCarnations
Summary: He was a poet.  He was his patron.  Can I make it anymore obvious?
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	Y Cywydd, or, The Love Poem

**Author's Note:**

> Dafydd ap Gwilym actually wrote a poem for his patron Ifor Hael (Ifor the Generous, a title bestowed upon him by Dafydd), which is a praise poem but which basically says ‘ugh, I have so many gorgeous women around me but they’re all a bit troublesome and I don’t love any of them as much as I love Ifor’. And it’s full of love-poem conventions. And which conventions you put in which form and with which metre was a STRICT and SERIOUS business! For Dafydd it probably was mostly ~poetic innovation~ although off-the-academic-record he gives me massive chaotic bi vibes, so. This is based on that.
> 
> Happy St David’s Day!

‘You _know_ you can’t write a love poem to a nobleman, even if he _is_ your patron,’ said Guinevere. ‘It’s presumptuous.’

‘Oh, it’s the presumptuousness you’re worried about, not the sodomy. That’s a relief.’ 

Gawain of Orkney, Court Poet — which basically meant that a loveable rogue with a golden tongue had found a job — was sitting on a verdant slope on the outskirts of Caerlion, beside Guinevere, who didn’t need a job because she was a noblewoman and also, when she wanted to, more or less controlled the place.

‘Sodomy might be a problem,’ replied Guinevere, ‘if salvation were on the cards for anyone at all around here. Fortunately, as it is, I’m pretty sure the addition of your sin will be but a drop in the ocean.’

‘You mean you couldn’t care less.’

‘I couldn’t care less.’

‘Right. Well, good, I suppose, since that _is_ the aim, like it or not.’ 

‘But you still can’t use the love-poem metre to address your patron. It’s improper. You have to use the formal praise structure and you know it.’

‘What if I used the formal praise structure but filled it with love conventions,’ he rather stated than asked, probably thinking that by doing so he was saving Guinevere the bother of trying to dissuade him. ‘Start with a nightingale so you think it’s a love poem—then suddenly you realise it’s praise-metre! “What’s he doing?” the audience cries, “this is unprecedented! This is genius! Roll over, Ovid!”’

‘You’ll get in all sorts of trouble. What about your reputation?’

Gawain laughed. ‘My reputation is that of a man who writes hilariously but adorably self-deprecating love poems, wrought with observations of the natural world unparalleled in their precision and originality of expression, and consequently the universal favourite of the ladies.’

‘You could afford a dash of that self-deprecation in real life,’ said Guinevere, flatly. ‘Besides — you’re not the universal favourite of the ladies. You have competition there.’

Gawain gave a melodramatic sigh and flopped back onto the grass. It tickled his face. ‘Who can blame them? This is why I want to write the damned poem for him!’

‘I’m not talking about Lancelot, you self-centred bastard, I’m talking about myself.’

He sat up again a moment to check if she was being serious, saw her impossibly smug face, and slumped back down again. ‘Good for you,’ he conceded. ‘Well, still. You know the thing about patrons?’

‘Probably. But go on.’

‘They get to decide what goes, because they pay you. So as long as Lancelot likes it—’

‘And as long as Lancelot thinks he can keep _his_ reputation despite it, _and_ as long as it’s not too blatantly sodomitical—’

‘Yes, yes, as long as all that’s the case, I can write a praise poem for him with all the structure and conventions of a love poem.’

‘So, a love poem.’

‘If you want to be pedantic about it.’

Guinevere shook her head. ‘Well, I know I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it — just don’t expect me to _get_ you out of it, once you’re being banished, or worse.’

Gawain sprang up and gave an excessively low bow. ‘You are a wonderful woman, Lady Guinevere.’ Then he looked up with his customary dazzling grin. ‘Must be off, then: I have a love poem — I mean a praise poem — to write.’ 

*

Gawain was wandering through the woods on the age-old hunt for inspiration. In many ways, he had already succeeded in the hunt many, many times over: every fair thing, each gift of God, beneath the splendid green pavilion reminded him of Lancelot. The birch, armed in silver, tall and slender yet strong and unbreaking; the stag, quiet and gentle in peace, swift and deadly in war… the delicate crocus, a little flash of beauty one could easily miss amongst its imposing surroundings— _one_ could. Gawain never. 

No shortage, then, of things to say, comparisons to make (though he exceeded them all, he was stronger than the roaring wave, more handsome than the stately hawk, more dazzling than the golden sun). It was just that all the ones he really wanted to say, he could not. Even by Gawain’s customarily daring standard, they would be a step too far. Say what you want about girls! Say, for that matter, what you want about married women—the conventions of _amour courtois_ were a wonderful excuse; thank you, France! But compare a man to the gentle dove—imagine his arms around you, sweet and tight as the honeysuckle… 

‘Gawain!’ 

Gawain almost tripped over a root. ‘By God—Lancelot—hello.’ He looked at him—he tried to hold his gaze, he really did, but he’d clearly been out hunting for some time, so his face was flushed and his hair a little unkempt and he was in his lighter clothes, a trifle muddy, and he had his bow slung artlessly over his shoulder and—well, had he looked for more than a glance, the poem might not have been the main thing putting him in danger of the sodomy laws. 

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lancelot, very seriously. ‘Did I interrupt your composition?’

Oh, Lord, had he been thinking aloud again? He swiftly recounted to himself all he might have said, and ascertained that any bit of it would have been very bad for Lancelot to have heard. A devilish little voice pointed out that on the other hand, there was the chance—if luck were really on his side—that Lancelot had heard it, and in fact liked the sound of it, and the patronage might be upgraded to a bed-fellowship (if you will).

But he shushed it. ‘You didn’t interrupt, not at all. Never an interruption when it’s you, Lancelot.’ He glanced up at him and smiled, hoping he’d kept his voice sufficiently carefree and unconfessional. But he found Lancelot looking a little bit surprised, and Gawain had not prepared for that, so he suddenly started talking again in an effort to brush over it. ‘Well, got to make sure I’ve got a poem ready for you for Sunday’s feast! So I’ve come to the woods to commune with the Muses.’

‘Have they provided yet?’

‘They have barely made an appearance, I’m afraid, much less provided. But, as ever, I have faith.’

‘I have no doubt it will be wonderful,’ said Lancelot. ‘As ever,’ he added, and began busying himself, quite unnecessarily it seemed, with the arrows in his quiver. Such comments came, periodically, from Lancelot, and they had very much not been lost on Gawain. But he couldn’t dare to suppose anything. Well, after all, it would have been rather odd for Lancelot to have been the patron of a poet whose poetry he didn’t like.

‘Another one about a troublesome girl, is it?’

‘Erm,’ said Gawain, the kind of wordsmithery one expected of a poet. ‘Something like that.’

‘Wait—’ Lancelot suddenly looked him in the eyes. ‘Didn’t you say it was going to be a—praise poem?’

Gawain felt himself flush, and forced a laugh, attempting to lean with studied casualness against a tree behind him but realising too late that it was lower than he had thought, and almost falling off the back of it. As he was trying to play that one smooth, catching hold of a branch with what he hoped looked like premeditated intent, he wondered bitterly to himself why his sauveté, usually so easy for him after so many years of careful cultivation, always seemed to fail him around the one person he really wanted to impress. Only around Lancelot did he trip over things. Only around Lancelot did he blush uncontrollably. Only around Lancelot did words ever fail him. 

‘That’s right,’ said Gawain.

‘Oh,’ said Lancelot, rearranging his quiver again. There must’ve been a pun in that, Gawain thought vaguely, the way Lancelot’s quiver made him quiver. No, terrible, no. ‘So, erm. Am I allowed to ask what it’ll be about?’

‘Well. You,’ said Gawain, with a brief grin that was not returned, ‘obviously.’

‘Well—yes,’ said Lancelot. ‘I meant—more specifically. I should wait, I suppose—’ gesturing with an awkward little nod of his head, he turned to leave, but Gawain, in a flash of unthinking, grabbed his hand. 

‘Don’t go. I want to tell you.’ Lancelot looked startled, and Gawain wanted to kiss him. This was a less-than-advisable idea. So was what he actually did. ‘Lancelot—allow me, if you will, to be honest.’

Lancelot gazed at him, his lips slightly parted, and pink like his cheeks, and Gawain’s heart was fluttering like the birds above them. Still holding Lancelot’s hand, he encouraged him gently to sit beside him on the branch. They faced each other. Gawain took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking for a long time of writing a… different sort of poem for you. A very old kind of poem, yet not one that people might, er, think quite… conventional for court feasts. Or indeed for court. Or indeed for—public.’

Lancelot turned redder still. Gawain forced himself not to analyse what he was doing. He hoped that in a pinch this could still be considered the Ideal of Male Friendship. That is, friendship without those other pleasant parts that most people found less acceptable and more _grounds-for-burning_.

‘Lancelot, I’m tired of always saying you’re strong as the birch, swift as the stag, generous as summer. You’re all those, of course. But… to me, you’re also gentle as the dove… sweet as the honeysuckle… beautiful as the sunlight slanting between the fretwork of the trees, making the finest gold filigree of the fallen leaves below.’

‘Gawain…’ To Gawain’s amazement, Lancelot tightened his grasp on his hand. Gawain brought the other to join it and was astonished to find Lancelot doing the same. 

‘I want to call you the sun,’ he went on, ‘the sea, the soaring mountains and the ranging sky…’ he leant forward, ‘the loveliest green valleys, the purple heather like silk, the deep, beautiful lake… I want to sing of your fingers between mine, your arms firm around me, your lips… Lancelot, I want to write you a love poem.’

For a moment they gazed at each other. Gawain watched his beloved’s face go through a dozen emotions, mimicking, he could feel, his own. And then they closed the gap as one. But the poem continued—between their lips, their tongues, their hands and hair and clothes and skin. Their breath, the birdsong, the light as it faded and their bodies together. The leaves, the grass. The flowers. 

‘I think you should write the poem,’ whispered Lancelot at last, into Gawain’s dishevelled hair. ‘Just say it’s poetic innovation. They’ll be so blinded by the scandal of you mixing your genres, they’ll overlook…’

‘That I confessed in verse my undying love for you, a nobleman?’ grinned Gawain into Lancelot’s chest. ‘Alright then. Just for you.’ And with his poet’s lips, he kissed him again. And again. And again. 

**Author's Note:**

> The poem by Dafydd is called Basaleg, you can find it here in Welsh and English under Poems\14: Basaleg — it’s only short & well worth the read! 
> 
> ‘Y Cywydd’ (KUH-with) means ‘The Love Poem’ & cywyddau (pl.) require very particular, intricate metrical structure to technically be cywyddau. Praise poems were meant to have a different, more formal structure, & contain different images — for fairly obvious reasons. It was very bold of Dafydd to do it & we stan him for it (although this is also the dude who wrote a poem about his own penis, so. Yeah.)


End file.
